Evolutionary Perspectives on Imaginative Culture (PDF)

Joseph Carroll is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the English department at the University of Missouri, St. Louis. Since the early 1990s, he has been working to integrate evolutionary research and literary study. He has developed an evolutionary theory of literature, produced interpretive essays on literary works ranging from plays of Shakespeare to modern novels, written essays in intellectual history, and conducted empirical research on protagonists and antagonists in Victorian fiction.

Mathias Clasen is associate professor in literature and media in the English Department, Aarhus University, and associate editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture. His research focuses on horror entertainment from an evolutionary perspective. His book Why Horror Seduces was published by Oxford University Press in 2017.



Emelie Jonsson is assistant professor of English literature at the University of Tromsø, Norway. Her research centers on the friction between human psychology and naturalistic cosmology. She has published evolutionary interpretive arguments on E. M. Forster, H. G. Wells, Arthur Conan Doyle, T. H. Huxley, and Edward Bulwer Lytton, as well as collaborated on quantitative projects concerning intellectual history, biocultural theory, and poetic archetypes reflecting mating strategies. She is an associate editor of Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture.